Various types of coolers and refrigerators are commonly used to present different types of products for sale. The coolers generally have a transparent door, a lid, or another type of entrance such that a consumer can see the products therein. The products are generally placed on shelves within the cooler. As is well known, the consumer opens the door to the cooler and grasps the desired product or products. Such coolers are commonly used to sell refrigerated products such as bottles or cans of beverages. These beverages may include coffee; tea; water; fruit, vegetable, and juice concentrates; fruit, vegetable, and juice beverages; isotonic beverages; non-isotonic beverages; milk and milk by-products; carbonated soft drinks; and soft drink concentrate. The products also may include one or more food brands or other types of consumable items.
Various approaches have been used in the past to make an individual cooler, or the products within that cooler, stand out from the surrounding environment. One goal of cooler design is to have the cooler, or the products within the cooler, catch the consumer's eye. Such an attraction may lead to an increase in product sales. These approaches have included, for example, various types of advertising promoting the products, different lighting effects within or around the cooler, the use of sound, and various combinations of attractions so as to grab the consumer's attention.
Another method by which to attract the consumer's attention is to create motion within the cooler. For example, commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/110,847, entitled "Rotary Cooler", describes a cooler with a number of product shelves that may rotate three hundred and sixty degrees (360.degree.). Each shelf has an exposed portion with a number of products placed thereon, an interior portion for storage of products, and a panel separating the two areas. Products are moved between the exposed portion and the interior portion via an internal pusher device. When a sensor indicates that a product has been removed from the exposed area, the pusher device pushes another one of the product from the interior portion to the exterior portion. The disclosure of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/110,847 is incorporated herein by reference.
Although the rotary cooler as described therein has proved to be effective in catching the eye of the consumer through the use of motion, the cooler has several drawbacks. For example, the cooler has numerous moving parts that must be maintained. The cooler is therefore expensive to construct and expensive to operate as compared to conventional coolers. Loading the cooler also has turned out to be somewhat difficult in that the products should be located within the interior portion of the cooler. The interior portion of the cooler, however, is not directly accessible such that the cooler may not always be loaded in a first in and a first out basis. Further, because this cooler does not use a door, consumers may not believe the products are sufficiently cold.
What is needed, therefore, is a cooler that uses motion to attract the eye of the consumer. The motion within the cooler must be accomplished in a safe and cost effective manner. Further, the cooler should be relatively inexpensive to construct, operate, maintain, and reload as compared to most types of conventional coolers.